There was a double rap on the door, and the white-haired court security officer leaned into the room. Redpath released the cigarette to begin its five-floor plunge to the sidewalk and pulled his hand inside, praying there was nothing flammable below.
“Couple of people to see you,” the CSO said. He sniffed and looked up at the ceiling. “You aren’t smoking, are you?”
“Smoking?”
Redpath innocently ran his left hand through his hair, feeling something like panic. An interruption right now was a disaster. In just a few minutes, he would need to be back in court, and he hadn’t even looked at two of the questionnaires. Every single second was precious.
But the anxious, exhausted face of his client’s wife was already visible around the CSO’s shoulder; she and her older brother, Lucas, were pressing into the room. The officer backed out of the way, angling another suspicious glance upward, and closed the door behind them.
“I’m really sorry to bother you,” Sandra said. “I just needed to know, you know, how things were going.”
“So far the day hasn’t gone too bad,” Redpath said. “Can we talk tonight? You’re catching me at a tough moment.” He glanced at his watch.
“I tried to tell her,” Lucas said, sighing and lobbing Redpath an apologetic look.
Both Sandra and Lucas were well dressed. Sandra wore a maroon suit, tastefully set off with a navy-and-gold scarf. She’d lost a shocking amount of weight since Redpath’s first meeting with her, and the suit’s tailoring flattered her model-slim body. Lucas, in an expensive charcoal suit, regimental tie, and heavy gold cufflinks, looked the picture of the successful corporate lawyer.
“So. Everything’s okay?” Sandra’s her whole posture begged for some kind of reassurance.
“Sandy,” Lucas said quietly, “come on.”
“So far, so good.” Redpath made a show of looking at his watch again and smiled up at Sandra distractedly.
For the first time, however, Redpath took a good look at Moon’s wife, and he could not help but feel sympathy for her. It was as though her pretty, smooth face had been printed on cloth, and someone had grabbed a fistful of it and twisted. One of her eyes seemed lower than the other, and her nose looked enlarged, almost bulbous. As she bent toward Redpath, her lips were parted; they seemed to be holding themselves in readiness to speak but still waiting for instructions from her brain about what words to use. Sandra looked at him intently for a few seconds, and then, as sudden as a sneeze, a sob leaped up from her chest, and she covered her face with both hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her fingers. “I’m sorry. But … to see him sitting there like that.” She shuddered, still hiding her eyes, and a tear began working its way down the outside of her hand onto her wrist. “To see him like that. With all those people staring at him. Like some kind of animal.”
“Sandy,” Lucas whispered. He put his hand on her arm.
“I knew it would be awful, but I didn’t know how awful.” She was shaking and taking deep breaths.
Redpath dropped the questionnaire onto a pile on the floor and stood up. Bending over his two visitors, he placed his hands on Sandra’s shoulders.
“You know what I need you to do?” Redpath asked in his oil drum voice. “You know what Moon needs you to do? He needs you to take care of yourself, Sandy. You need to eat. You need to sleep. Do you hear me?” He squeezed her shoulders.
“Mmm-hmm.” Sandra took her hands away from her face, nodding and wiping the tears.
Redpath looked down, shaking her shoulders gently for emphasis. “If he sees you like this, it will make everything ten times harder for him. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Okay.” She inhaled deeply and swallowed, then nodded again. Her trembling subsided.
“I know it’s awful,” Redpath said, patting her shoulders. “Believe me, I know exactly how awful it is. But all we can do is not make it worse.” He sat down again and picked up the questionnaire. “Now I badly need the next few minutes, all right? We’ll talk tonight.”
Sandra nodded without saying anything, and Lucas steered her out of the room. By the time the door clicked, Redpath was already lost in Number Twelve’s description of the extent of her exposure to pretrial publicity. It took a few seconds for him to realize that Lucas had remained in the room.
“I’d like a moment of your time. Privately, if I might,” he said.
“Okay,” Redpath said impatiently. “But not now.” He paused and softened his tone. “You must know how it is.”
Lucas looked steadily at the old lawyer in his rumpled suit and unshined shoes. He looked up at the ceiling and took in the aroma of stale cigarette smoke.
“Fine,” he said. “Tonight then.”
As he turned to go, there was another knock.
Redpath slapped the questionnaire onto his knee furiously and exploded, “Christ Almighty!” But this time it was the courtroom deputy, Ruby Johnson.
“Showtime! His Highness is coming back in five minutes. I’m rounding everybody up.” She crinkled her nose. “Uh-oh! Here’s a warning, Bill, free of charge: If Tom Dickinson catches you polluting his conference room …”
“Me?”
“He’s a fine, kindhearted gentleman, but let’s just say I would not provoke him, you know?”
Redpath sighed and began gathering up the questionnaires. Lucas Cummings hurried out of the room and down the hall to catch up with his little sister, who’d managed to get herself into such a world of trouble.
22
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lydia Gomez-Larsen sat in the paneled courtroom at counsel table offering up an expression of well-practiced calm and waiting for the judge to make his entry. The juror questionnaires sat in a neat pile in front of her, arranged in order, one through sixteen. Next to the pile, and exactly parallel to it, lay her yellow pad, with her notes printed out for each juror. In the middle of the pad, at a forty-five degree angle, was her black Sharpie. Like Redpath, she’d skipped lunch and felt a little sick.
What Gomez-Larsen had learned from skimming the questionnaires had not been good at all, and behind her poised façade, an ulcer of anxiety throbbed. A fear that she might tremble kept her elegant fingers folded in her lap.
She could barely remember the last time she had lost a trial, and she really, really did not want to lose United States v. Hudson. She’d known that Washington’s insistence on the capital designation would make her job harder, but she could now see that the situation was worse than she’d imagined. The questionnaires revealed that a great many of the pro-government jurors she normally relied on would be struck from the pool because of their strong views favoring the death penalty. The thought of having, possibly, to face the O’Connors and the Delgados, and explain the defendant’s acquittal—the image of Moon Hudson swaggering down the street with his gangbanger friends slapping him on the back—all because of some bullshit out of Washington, was too much. A deep breath dispelled the shakes.
The chair next to her creaked as Alex Torricelli shifted uncomfortably.
“Jesus, I’m suffocating,” he muttered. “Can’t believe you do this every day.” He dabbed at his forehead with a crumpled Dunkin’ Donuts napkin.
Alex’s chalk-white face was not going to inspire a whole lot of confidence. Maybe it was a mistake putting him up here, shoving him in front of the jury as the everyday hero. She punched him lightly in the shoulder.
“Relax,” she said soothingly. “This is fun. By the time we’re done, you’ll be ready for law school.”
Gomez-Larsen knew perfectly well that her case was not airtight. She had a star witness in Ernesto “Pepe” Rivera, the driver Alex had managed to grab immediately after the shooting. But if Pepe failed to impress the jury, her case would be in big trouble, and during preparations so far he was coming across as a sulky little twerp.
She patted Alex’s arm
. “Everything’s going to be fine. All the women on the jury will be swooning for you.”
“Swell,” Alex whispered. “Exactly what I need.” Then he added more urgently, “Where the hell is His Honor? I need to hit the head again.”
“All rise!” the court officer called out.
Gomez-Larsen rose smoothly to her feet and watched as Judge Norcross bustled into the courtroom in that odd way he had, bent forward like a stork on ice skates, with his robe wafting out behind him. He was holding a manila folder, an unusual prop. What could that be?
While Tom Dickinson worked through the opening, the judge set the strange folder to one side and poured himself a cup of water. Then the sixteen potential jurors were led into the courtroom. As promised, the other members of the pool had been excused for the day, making their departure with relieved looks. Sleet was forecast for that afternoon, turning to heavy snow as the temperature dropped overnight.
Gomez-Larsen had to admit that, from his perch on the bench, Judge Norcross presented a credible image: tall, moderately good-looking, with just the beginning of gray at the temples—a picture of decency, good humor, and intelligence. In the time she’d been appearing before him, they’d developed a fair working relationship. Still, some judges could be counted on to rescue a floundering prosecutor, especially if they thought the defendant was guilty. Norcross, she knew, would call it straight; she’d sink or swim on her own.
The judge kept his hands folded in front of him and offered up his words slowly.
“All right. Thank you again. We have basically two things left on our plate this afternoon. First, I’ll have a few preliminary remarks and questions for you as a group. Second, after we let you return to the assembly lounge, we’ll be bringing each of you in, one at a time, for additional questioning from counsel, up to five minutes for each side.”
The jurors had been staring up at the bench with cowlike blankness, but at the mention of individual questioning, Gomez-Larsen noted that Three, Six, and Seven twitched noticeably and glanced from side to side. Timid? Perhaps more inclined to defer to authority? She shot a glance at defense counsel to check his reaction, but he was bent over a questionnaire, tracing the text with a large finger.
The judge went on: “As we go through this process, I will not be referring to you by name, but will be using the number our clerk assigned to you, which will help to avoid any unnecessary invasion of your privacy. Along those lines, you may notice that we have sketch artists here in the courtroom. They have been instructed not to draw the faces of potential jurors in any way that might make them identifiable.”
Now Six and Seven, two blocklike women in their sixties, looked even more uncomfortable and teetered toward each other for support. Gomez-Larsen noticed that Redpath had begun staring in their direction and was jotting something on his pad. Good or bad?
“I will now give you a brief overview of the charges against Clarence Hudson. Remember, the charges in this case are just that, only charges. They are not evidence in any way against Mr. Hudson. As I have already told you, Clarence Hudson is presumed innocent.”
Both the defense and prosecution watched the jurors carefully during this passage, hoping for a clue to measure the impact of the judge’s words. With some juries, these phrases would handicap the government badly; with others, they would be treated as lightly as the small print enclosed with a bottle of aspirin. Unfortunately, the faces of this group gave little away. Even moody Number Four, whom Gomez-Larsen had already decided to toss at all costs, was a blank. Were they zoning out?
The description that followed of the RICO charges—the government’s burden to prove the existence of a racketeering enterprise and to demonstrate that the murders had been committed to further its activity—was, to Gomez-Larsen’s ears, impressively simple and concise, but she could see from the jurors’ half-open mouths and crinkled foreheads that they were struggling to follow. By the time Norcross had trudged through this material, and had moved on to the drug charges and the admonition that they refrain from discussing the case or reading anything about it, it was clear that several of the jurors had pulled the plug and were daydreaming. Number Eleven, then Ten, then Three and Four simultaneously, yawned. The room was warm, and the hum of the ventilators, blending with the faint but continuous murmur and rustle of the spectators, was creating an environment ideally suited for a cozy nap. Then, between two of Norcross’s paragraphs, Alex punctuated the text with a soft fart, like a squeaking hinge. As the rankness drifted past her, Gomez-Larsen bent forward, rubbed her temples, and cleared her throat.
“Sorry,” Alex whispered. Redpath looked over at them, raised his eyebrows, and sniffed loudly. A stifled chuckle rose from one of the two tough-looking guys perennially in the front row of the gallery. Baldie and Ponytail. No one else appeared to notice.
But now their journey was approaching a dangerous curve.
“The trial of this case,” Judge Norcross was saying, “may have one stage, or it may have two. We don’t know yet.” He paused for a sip of water, set the cup at a distance, and pulled the manila folder over to him. Up to this point, he had been speaking extemporaneously, covering standard material. Now, in the deepening quiet of the courtroom, he was preparing to launch into some new segment of his instructions. The portentous folder, and the judge’s change in tone, seemed to bring most of the jurors back to the land of the living.
“The first, and perhaps the only, stage of this trial will concentrate on the question of whether the government can prove Mr. Hudson guilty of the actual charges against him, beyond a reasonable doubt. During this stage, the jury may not consider the defendant’s possible punishment in any way. If the jury concludes that the government has failed to prove the RICO charges beyond a reasonable doubt, it will return verdicts of not guilty on these charges, and its work will be at an end. Even if the jury finds Mr. Hudson guilty on the drug charges—and I’m not suggesting you should—his sentencing for them will be my responsibility. The jurors will go home, and there will be no second stage.”
Thanks a ton, Gomez-Larsen thought. Show them the wide, inviting shortcut to the exit door.
“On the other hand,” Judge Norcross continued, “the jury may find that the government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt one or both of the RICO murder charges, and return a verdict, or verdicts, of guilty on that charge or those charges.” He paused, lifting his voice slightly. “If this occurs, there will be a second stage to this trial.”
A stillness was spreading over the gallery, so that by now the loudest sound in the courtroom was the light scrape of the artists’ chalk on their sketch pads. It seemed to Gomez-Larsen that the judge was trying to shape his words one by one, suspend them in the air, and let them hang there before the jurors.
“The second stage of the trial,” he said, “if there is one, will focus on whether the defendant should be sentenced to death, or to a term of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. As you’ve heard, ladies and gentlemen, this is a death penalty case. There are two extremely important points I must make to you concerning this fact right now.”
Judge Norcross took a moment for another sip of water and turned to the next page of his notes. The sixteen men and women in the jury box were resolving into a kind of tableau. Even restless Number Four was immobile, her right hand covering her mouth. Number Ten, in the middle of the second row, had tilted his chair back against the courtroom wall as though pressed into it. He was resting the tips of his fingers together on his stomach in a gesture suggesting prayer.
“First, the jury is never required to impose a death sentence upon any defendant under any circumstances. Understand this clearly. Whatever the evidence, no juror will ever be placed in a position where he or she must vote for death.
“Second, I am also obliged tell you that, if there is a second stage to this trial, and if the jury at the conclusion of this second stage does unanimously find that the
death penalty should be imposed upon Mr. Hudson”—and here Judge Norcross nodded at where the defendant sat looking rigidly at his hands—“I will be required as the judge to sentence him to death. I will have no choice in the matter.”
The silence had captured the room entirely.
“In other words,” Judge Norcross concluded. “I will have no power to change the jury’s decision. In the event that this trial moves to a second stage—what we call the penalty stage—the jury of citizens selected in this case, and not me, will bear the ultimate responsibility for deciding whether Clarence Hudson should be executed.”
23
Barbara Cummings, Moon’s mother-in-law, heard a car door slam and hurried to the parlor window. There, finally, was her prodigal daughter stepping carefully over the flagstones, balancing Grace against her heart with both hands, and wearing that old dear, guarded look on her puss. Always the same, whether they were trying to convince her, as a third grader, to stay with her violin lessons or, as a sixteen-year-old, to sign up for AP physics. Never bad tempered, always unbendable. Now this.
Peeking around the curtain at her youngest, Professor Cummings felt something crowd into her throat and dam up against the back of her eyes. She loved the child to distraction, and yet she had never been able to do a single thing, no matter how much she worried or how hard she tried, to smooth the girl’s path.
With jury selection in Moon’s trial taking so long, mother and daughter had talked and, after some negotiations, had decided that Sandra should come spend a weekend in Rochester, to get a little break and to drop off Grace. This would free up Sandra to attend the trial every day once it started, something the lawyer said was essential. By good luck, Barbara was on sabbatical, correcting the galleys of a new book, so her time was flexible. She would love taking care of her granddaughter and, with Grace safe, Sandra’s father might finally relax a little. Lucas was coming home tonight, too, to spend some time with his sister.
The Hanging Judge Page 15